Q: Sendmail -- working around overly long greet pauses

[Philip Prindeville]

Ed Greshko wrote:

>Philip Prindeville wrote:
>  
>
>>I'm trying to deliver email to some sites that seem to have
>>obnoxiously long greet pause configured (yes, it's a
>>Chinese site, and yes, it's their contact address for reporting
>>abuse... guess they aren't about to make it easy to do):
>>
>># date ; sendmail -q -v ; date
>>Tue Feb 20 12:41:19 MST 2007
>>
>>Running /var/spool/mqueue/l1J1BZTd015129 (sequence 1 of 4)
>><anti-spam at ns.chinanet.cn.net>... Connecting to ns.chinanet.cn.net. via esmtp...<anti-spam at ns.chinanet.cn.net>... Deferred: Connection timed out with ns.chinanet.cn.net.
>>
>>Running /var/spool/mqueue/l1HKVCiu004463 (sequence 2 of 4)
>><anti-spam at ns.chinanet.cn.net>... Deferred: Connection timed out with ns.chinanet.cn.net.
>>
>>Running /var/spool/mqueue/l1HKWqcD004481 (sequence 3 of 4)
>><anti-spam at ns.chinanet.cn.net>... Deferred: Connection timed out with ns.chinanet.cn.net.
>>
>>Running /var/spool/mqueue/l1GKJkvD011374 (sequence 4 of 4)
>><anti-spam at ns.chinanet.cn.net>... Deferred: Connection timed out with ns.chinanet.cn.net.
>>Tue Feb 20 12:44:29 MST 2007
>>#
>>
>>
>>I've tried bumping the connect timeout:
>>
>>define(`confTO_CONNECT', `5m')dnl
>>
>>(which results in "O Timeout.connect=5m")...  as well as
>>running sendmail as:
>>
>>sendmail -q -v -O Timeout.connect=5m -O Timeout.initial=5m
>>
>>but this doesn't seem to make any difference.  It looks like
>>the kernel's internal maximum timeout on a connect() is forcing
>>a shorter interval.
>>
>>Anyone know what the workaround for this is?  Do I need to force
>>the kernel's TCP connect() timeout to something larger?
>>    
>>
>
>Before you try fixing anything please try....
>
>telnet ns.chinanet.cn.net 25
>
>It never answers the call.  At least not from Taiwan.
>
>  
>

It's hit or miss.  Sometimes it answers, sometimes it doesn't.

-Philip